


i can’t run (but i can walk much faster than this)

by Lirazel



Category: Infinite (Band), K-POP RPF, K-pop, Korean Pop, Kpop - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Friendship, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-28
Updated: 2012-06-28
Packaged: 2017-11-08 18:36:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/446251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lirazel/pseuds/Lirazel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes Sungyeol turns around and Myungsoo isn’t there bumping up against his back like he always was before.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i can’t run (but i can walk much faster than this)

**Author's Note:**

> Companion of sorts to [the stars are just old light](http://archiveofourown.org/works/446249)

The thing is, it doesn’t get better. Myungsoo always said that it would, and Sungyeol had ( _almost_ ) believed him, because when Myungsoo met his eyes like that, it was ( _almost_ ) impossible not to believe him.

Myungsoo said “better,” but what he meant was “more lines” and “callbacks” and “not feeling like a deadweight,” and when Myungsoo said it, Myungsoo believed it ( _Myungsoo was probably the only one_ ). 

\--

“If you just had more confidence,” Woohyun says, half-exasperated and half-contemptuous of Sungyeol’s sulking after another line assignment ( _Sungyeol hates his own sulkiness more than anything in the world, but he’s also powerless against it_ ), and Sungyeol turns away. “Or, okay: if you just _convinced them_ that you had more confidence, even if you don’t. Just pretend until you start to believe it yourself.” 

Sungyeol’s mouth twists up and he can’t stop the words: “Well, you’d know all about pretending, wouldn’t you?”

( _They both knew he was going to say it, but that doesn’t make the cut any shallower. Sometimes Sungyeol thinks Infinite is just the same people saying the same lines over and over and over again and never becoming less vulnerable to them._ )

“Fuck you,” Woohyun says, and then he’s gone and Sungyeol is alone and he’s not sure if that’s what he wanted to begin with ( _he’s never really sure_ ).

\--

Myungsoo doesn’t say anything at all, not this time, and the shrug of his shoulder says that even he’s starting to doubt whether it’ll ever get better the way he said it would ( _the others may think Sungyeol is mostly firmly entrenched in his own world, but he’s always been fluent in Myungsoo_ ).

\--

It used to be so _easy_ with Myungsoo. 

From the beginning ( _Sungyeol and Sungjong brought in to the practice room and there were five other boys who were told they were going to be seven and it was tense at first and the memories of SM were pressing up against the back of Sungyeol’s ribs, but then there was Myungsoo_ ), Myungsoo laughed at Sungyeol’s clowning even when the others rolled their eyes. Myungsoo was quiet, of course, quieter than any of the others ( _and the company took that and made it into something it wasn’t: they took it and they made it into L_ ), but his face scrunched up when he laughed and if he didn’t always listen when Sungyeol talked, at least he didn’t turn away ( _Sungyeol didn’t always listen when he talked himself, so it wasn’t like he could blame Myungsoo. He didn’t mind_ ). They got close quickly, that false kind of closeness, like summer camp, when you’re there for a week, but it feels like a century ( _relationships more complicated than the real-life kind, but they don’t have any foundation, and even if they feel like the meaning of life, you forget to call three weeks later and after a year has passed and you look at a picture, you can’t remember any of the names_ ), but then some time passed and it became real, growing until the other guys talked about Myungsoo and Sungyeol being best friends with a kind of casualness that thrilled Sungyeol just as much as it scared him ( _Sungyeol hadn’t had a best friend before, not one he was confident enough to use that label with_ ).

But eventually he got to the point where he could take it for granted, where he could pretend to hate Myungsoo, tell interviewers that he was the most annoying, make fun of his clumsiness. And then he could flip around and talk about friendship and being closest to him and he knew that Myungsoo would keep up. Or Myungsoo could do the same, and Sungyeol would follow his lead. ( _Either way: it was easy_.)

They were the friends that shoved each other around and goofed off together and insulted each other and pulled pranks, and it was great because it was them ( _and it was having Myungsoo’s attention_ ) and Sungyeol didn’t think about it too much because it meant so much to him.

( _Maybe that’s where it all went wrong._ )

\--

Sometimes Sungyeol turns around and Myungsoo isn’t there bumping up against his back like he always was before.

( _Sungyeol is so terrified that he doesn’t always remember to breathe_.)

\-- 

Sungyeol doesn’t resent Myungsoo for taking the acting jobs when he’s offered them. Sure, they just fell into his lap because of his face, just like the idol thing, just like Infinite, but Myungsoo isn’t entitled. Myungsoo might not have _wanted_ to be an idol the way, say, Woohyun or Sungjong did. He may not want to act the way Sungyeol does. But once something gets handed to him, Myungsoo works as hard as he can to deserve it. ( _Sungyeol knows, even though Myungsoo has never said anything about it and never will, that he hears every single comment about “coasting on his looks” and “all he has to do is show up and be pretty” and remembers it forever. Sungyeol hates the people who say those things more than he hates the ones that scoff “useless” and mock his voice_.)

Myungsoo stays in the practice room late to force his awkward body to remember this one move, he foregoes sleep to practice his Japanese, he never complains even when vocal lessons leave his throat raw. He stands quietly with his eyes on the floor when Sunggyu or Woohyun tear into him about mistakes and weaknesses ( _that quietness isn’t L, it’s Myungsoo, and if people can’t tell the difference, then people are even stupider than Sungyeol thought_ ). Myungsoo wants to prove that he deserves what he has, and Sungyeol is a little bit in love with him for that.

So, no, Sungyeol doesn’t resent Myungsoo for acting ( _he couldn’t resent Myungsoo even if he tried_ ). But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt to see him head out each morning with a marked-up script in his hands.

( _It hurts. A lot._ )

\--

Everyone says Myungsoo is beautiful, but Sungyeol has never really thought of him like that. There are moments when Myungsoo is so cute Sungyeol could die, but that’s a different thing. Myungsoo being cute is just like Myungsoo being a dork or being clumsy or being quiet or being stubborn or being too closed-off—it’s a reason why Sungyeol likes him or doesn’t like him, a thing that makes Sungyeol laugh or annoys him. 

Sungyeol never understood why it mattered that Myungsoo is beautiful. It’s got nothing to do with who he is, only with how other people see him. And Sungyeol never thought that that really mattered, not when you got down to it.

( _Sungyeol is beginning to learn how naïve he was._ )

 

\--

Sungyeol comes back to the practice room after a quick run to the bathroom, and the music is blaring, loud and over-produced even from the beat-up boombox in the corner ( _the sound system isn’t working today, and everyone’s cranky because of it_ ). Sunggyu is barking orders and Hoya and Dongwoo are moving through the steps like they were born to dance and Sungjong’s hips are swiveling in a way that makes fangirls scream and Myungsoo’s flawless face is set in concentration and Woohyun scratches at his stomach and his shirt rides up to reveal a flash of his abs and Sungyeol thinks, _What am I doing here?_

\--

Sungyeol’s candy cheeks might be gone, but he’s still one ( _two three four_ ) layer of fat away from the famous idol chocolate abs.

\--

He gives too many pieces of himself away, and he doesn’t even mean to.

The cameras are there and he can’t help it: he laughs ( _too hard, and the sound of it when he watches the episode later grates on his ears_ ) and he yells ( _even when there’s no reason to_ ) and he romps ( _“choding,” they say, but Sungyeol’s been called worse things_ ). The cameras put a spell on him ( _or something_ ), and when Sungyeol has an audience, he can’t turn it off even if he wants to ( _later, he lies in bed and stares at the ceiling—the one decorated with loops and streaks of mold in the old dorm, the pristine one now—and replays moments over and over in his head till he wants to kill himself to escape from the loop_ ).

The thing about acting is ( _real acting, not acting-that’s-scripted-but-is-supposed-to-be-real_ ) that he can fall under the camera’s spell and give and give and give, but he’s not giving himself away: the words, the actions, the emotions belong to someone else ( _or at least it’s easier to believe that_ ). 

But Sungyeol doesn’t get callbacks, and so he tries to teach himself to hold back ( _sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, and he’s not always sure which is which_ ).

\--

Sungyeol always remembers to call him L when the cameras are rolling. The others sometimes slip up, let out a “Myungsoo” when caught up in the moment, but Sungyeol never does. The difference is important, and Sungyeol needs to remember that L isn’t his best friend, that the boy beside him on the stage isn’t the one who swipes his ipod only to complain about his music choices or who starts a kick war for no reason or who flops down beside him in the van and doesn’t care about personal space ( _as the years go by, Myungsoo lets more and more bits of himself peek through the façade of L till the concept is egg-shell thin, and sometimes Sungyeol wants to scream because that just makes it more confusing and he doesn’t know what’s real and what isn’t anymore, and he needs margins, damn it_ ).

L hangs off of Woohyun’s shoulder or feeds Sungjong for the cameras, and that _is_ L because the cameras are rolling, right? Only his face scrunches up when he laughs and Sungyeol isn’t so sure anymore.

( _“It’s just a script,” Dongwoo says, bumping his shoulder into Sungyeol’s after Sungyeol’s just finished his lunch alone. It’s just a script, but maybe Sungyeol’s just as shit an actor as everyone always thought_.)

\--

Sometimes Sungyeol turns around and Myungsoo isn’t there bumping up against his back like he always was before, and Sungyeol knows it’s his own fault.

\--

He tries to learn to strike a balance: not too much, not too little ( _because if he isn’t good at variety shows, then what is he good at?_ ). He’s never been good at the balance thing ( _lanky limbs going everywhere_ ), but he can work as hard as the others if he wants to ( _when they were trainees, he would lie and say he was sick at the hospital, but really he was wandering around the streets of Manwondong by himself. He hasn’t done that in a long, long time, and it’s only a little because he doesn’t have the freedom anymore_ ).

( _He works hard at it, but he’s not sure how good he is at it. He’s not sure how good he is at anything._ )

\--

Backstage for some interview or variety show or another and he’s sitting on a bench by himself, his back against the wall, the top of his head butting against the bottom of a cheaply-framed picture of a celebrity. There’s a water bottle in his hands, damp with condensation that’s slickening his palms, and he drops it and it rolls away in a slow, lazy arc, and he doesn’t bend to pick it up. Just watches.

He’s still watching it when he feels someone sit down beside him, and when was the last time they were alone like this, just the two of them and silence? Schedules and schedules and roommates and fear ( _insecurity self-loathing it’s all the same_ ).

Myungsoo leans against him, the warmth of his arm pressing into Sungyeol even through the layers of both their shirts. ( _It feels different than hearts and hands for the cameras. Better._ )

“Stop trying so hard, Yeol,” Myungsoo says, and Sungyeol wants to laughcry, because doesn’t Myungsoo realize he would if he could? He doesn’t say anything, though, because there’s nothing to say ( _and because he wants this moment, Myungsoo beside him and no audience at all, to last forever_ ).

“It’ll be okay,” Myungsoo says after a long time, and Sungyeol desperately wants to believe him.

( _He doesn’t, quite. But Myungsoo does, and maybe that’s enough._ )


End file.
